A Bicycle Journey from Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia

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Ready For the Restart

Most other riders we know are in the process of wrapping up their trips in Tierra del Fuego now, before the Patagonia winter sweeps in, ferries close and things generally start to get tricky. My plan was the same, I should be back in the UK now, but life can be difficult to schedule and, for various reasons, not least of which starting a business, I’m running rather behind.

Writing this on a 3 day bus journey with Sam back from Central Peru to Santiago, Chile where the trip will restart, there’s been plenty of time for reflection; with so much going on, how easy it would be to call an end to the trip and how the actual act of reaching Ushuaia means so much less to me now than it once did. But whilst my desire to complete a ‘continuous end to end mission’ may have waned, my passion for off-road adventure, real adventure, has done anything but. This is what fuels the trip nowadays and the reason I’m not letting Patagonia, and all the good stuff that lies before it, slip away. The intrigue and nervous excitement of mapping out new routes, complete immersion in some of the world’s most incredible landscapes and, of course, total freedom. With any luck they’ll still be a photo with the Ushuaia sign, but the saying “The journey is the reward” will never have been more apt.

A surprisingly time consuming little side project; Alpamayo Designs. In ‘stealth mode’ until the summer

Pimped out and ready to go. Down a Macbook, stolen a couple of days ago, this is the lightest set up to date…

Out with the Brooks, in with a Specialized Phenom from the stable at home. This ain’t no touring bike folks.

Having got a good 5000 to 6000km (almost all off road) out the Schwalbe Extremes, I’ve decided to relieve them of duty and let a pair of Maxxis Icons take glory of the last few thousand km. Skinnier than I would have liked, but pretty light at 540g a pop…

The ‘Hope hub debacle’ has been going on for a while; grinding and wobbling my way through Bolivia and the Puna, the desperately needed replacement bearing set finally reached me in Peru. Subsequent dismantling revealed a bit of a mess; a missing driveside seal and an exploded driveside bearing, no doubt a direct result of the former. The seal, most likely lost in the dingy abyss of the mechanic’s workshop where my cassette was swapped out, isn’t exactly something that’s easy to come by out here. And with the remnants of the bearing casing also firmly stuck inside the hub body, defeat was grudgingly accepted. One for the Hope guys to hopefully figure out when I’m back in the UK, one can only hope…

So out with $200 British bling and in with the humble Shimano Deore; bought, couriered from Lima and fitted for less than the cost a Hope rear bearing set.

Hi…only visited a couple of pages but this looks like a blog I need to get stuck into! Stumbled across a couple of your posts as I’m looking for a minimalist front rack/rackless setup for a couple of drybags, any info appreciated 🙂